community manager skills Archives

5 Critical Hiring Characteristics for Community Management Roles

February 18, 2022 By Jim Storer

Looking at community job descriptions, it’s clear there are some characteristics that are prized by hiring managers.

While empathy, communication skills, and collaboration have always been a component of a community professional’s responsibilities, the growing recognition of the need for negotiation and strategic skills is newer. As community roles become more common, and as they continue to diversify into more specific areas (like community operations, technical community management, etc.) there will continue to be a core set of characteristics that are critical for successful community management.

We’ve found these five characteristics to be key when evaluating community talent. This is obviously not a complete list – thinking about your unique needs as a community program and an organization will always be important when thinking about the right fit for your community team.

5 Critical Hiring Characteristics for Community Management Roles

1 – Empathy.  Many community management job descriptions share a key requirement: empathy. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another is quickly becoming a critical part of effective community management. Emotional intelligence is a key attribute.

2- Strong communication and negotiating skills. Community professionals interact with a wide range of people and have to gracefully navigate differences of opinion and perspective. That requires sophisticated communication and negotiation skills – no wonder these skills are becoming more common on job descriptions.

 3 – Ability to collaborate across the business. Community professionals are being asked to partner with teams across organizations. This requires leading discussions and training on community topics, as well as implementing projects that generate shared value. The ability to listen, translate concepts across different groups, and collaborate is essential.

4 – Strategic planning. In an environment where you rarely can tell people what to do, staying aligned around a strategic vision is key to a successful community program. This strategic vision informs planning, governance, and tactical programming in ways all community professionals need to understand.

5 – Ability to thrive remotely. We admit, this one is new and we aren’t seeing it on too many job descriptions yet, but just wait. As the world becomes more comfortable with employees working remotely the ability to thrive both working remotely, and also connecting people who are working remotely will become a sought-after skill.

If you want a primer on 50 common community management skills our Community Skills Framework™ includes five skill families with ten skills in each family, prioritized based on what we learned from our extensive community management research. You can use the Community Skills Framework™ as you craft your community job descriptions to ensure you are using industry-standard terms and including the skills critical to your particular community needs.
Learn more about the Community Skills Framework™ here.

If you want to browse community management job descriptions and get more advice on smart hiring for online community management roles you can download our community job index here.

3 Quick Community Wins for February

February 2, 2022 By Jim Storer

Check these three easy community management to-dos off your list and set yourself up for community success.

We are delighted that in recent years February has become a time to practice love in all its forms. If you’re into all that Cupid stuff? Awesome! But the rise of Galentine’s Day, along with increased calls for self-care is what really warms our hearts. Our quick wins for February focus on online community love.

1- Put your oxygen mask on first.

If you aren’t taking care of yourself, can you really do your best job taking care of other people in your online community? No. So, February is a great time to reflect on the parts of your online community management role that help you thrive. Thinking about your role and your future isn’t selfish; knowing yourself and where you excel and where you want to grow is only good for your community.

If you aren’t familiar with our Community Skills Framework, it’s a great way to assess your strengths and identify areas for growth and areas for outsourcing. You aren’t going to be great at every single community thing and that’s ok (more than okay – normal!) Identifying the places you should ask for help, hone your skills, and better use resources will make you happier at work and more productive. This short video walks you through all 50 skills in community management and helps you prioritize your time.

2- Show Your Superusers Some Love

Every online community – internal (employee community) and external (custom community) – has a handful of dedicated members who contribute more than the rest. Whether you have a formal superuser, advocacy, or membership leadership program, or informally track and interact with these members, now is a great time to show them some love.

5 Ways to Show Super Users Love in Your Online Community:

1- Swag. Everyone loves free stuff, and it doesn’t have to be an expensive investment. A hand-written note and some stickers go a long way with your superusers.

2- Shout-Outs. Highlight these members in the online community with a quick mention. Feeling seen and appreciated by online community managers makes super users feel valued.

3- Online Badges. If your online community uses badges, create a special badge to identify your superusers. This will also highlight your superusers as a resource to new members who may not understand how to engage when they join your online community.

4- Personally thank active contributors. It seems simple, but it helps increase member satisfaction.

5- Give them a sneak peek at an upcoming program, feature, or initiative. You’ll get valuable feedback and your superusers will love feeling like they got a behind-the-scenes look at something before everyone else does.

How to Start a Super User Program

If you don’t already have a superuser program in place you might consider putting that on your 2022 to-do list. Our State of Community Management research shows that when a member of an Average External Community shifts from a passive recipient of information to an active participant, their activity increases by more than 10x. Their ROI – the return they get for the time they invest – increases by over 200%. This makes investing in advocacy and member leadership programs a no-brainer.

This case study from Mimecast highlights how their community team nurtures their superusers, resulting in the growth of customer participation over 3x in two years.

3- Encourage Your Community to Say Thanks

Everyone is tired. Everyone is burnt out. Everyone is over being on Zoom. Ok, maybe not everyone, but definitely a lot of people. This last quick win is as much for your sanity as for the good of your community. Find a way this month to bring out the good people are feeling.

Maybe it’s a shout-out thread where members can recognize people or ideas that have inspired them recently. Maybe you start a gif-off channel in slack where people can share thank yous accompanied by delightful memes. Maybe you start an appreciation discussion where you tag three people who have made your work life easier/better/more fun/less crazy and ask them to tag three people, and so on.

A wise man (ok, it was Ferris Bueller) once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Use February as an excuse to slow down and show some love.

If you have other ways you like to show appreciation in your community we would LOVE to hear them! Please share in the comments below, in our free Facebook Group with over 1500 members, or tag us on twitter @thecr.

PS – We love you. After 14+ years in the community business, we know that we are only as successful as our community. You’re killing it out there, and we’re proud of you. Stay strong!

What are the skills of a community manager?

September 24, 2018 By Jim Storer

The online community management space has come a long way, but the Community Manager role still has the widest variation in responsibilities, compensation and reporting level.

Community Managers in the Organization

Community managers in our research work predominantly for corporations vs. agencies or as independents — suggesting that organizations see the value in investing in community management for the long haul. Community managers often work with communities scattered around the globe, giving them the opportunity to work remotely — a benefit that accrues to both internal and external community managers.

skills of a community manager

Community managers typically report to someone at the director level, with only about a third reporting to a vice president or higher. Despite the manager title, most community managers don’t manage anyone. Only about a third have direct reports, either employees or volunteers.

Community Manager Skills and Training Needs

Community managers’ top five most valued skills get to the heart of the tactical day-to-day monitoring and management of communities. Their most desired areas for training suggest an interest in digging deeper to drive engagement and understand what specific elements lead to community success. These training needs also suggest an opportunity for community professionals to develop into community specialists such as Community Architects, Community Analysts, and Community Strategists.

Highest Valued Skills of a Community Manager

Community Strategy Development
Community Advocacy And Promotion
 Listening And Analyzing
Writing
Measurement, Benchmarking, And Reporting

Biggest Community Manager Training Needs

Gamification And Behavior Change
Data Collection And Analysis
Community Advocacy And Promotion
Ux And Design
Community Strategy And Development

Community Manager Performance Evaluation

While community metrics are part of the evaluation of a community manager’s performance, the voice of the community is rarely part of the process. Just 5% of community managers say a review from the community is part of their performance evaluation — versus 91% who say they receive a manager assessment and 72% who submit a self-assessment.

Explore the Community Skills Framework:

Community Management Skills That Matter: Technical

April 23, 2018 By Jim Storer

Technical Community Management Skills: Designing and building effective communities

Technical skills are unique in that they are most easily outsourced and often score lower than their true importance because not everyone on a team needs each specific skill. But as noted in our Community Careers and Compensation Report Key Findings,
developing a technical specialty is a great way to increase your value within a community team — and add to your paycheck. Not everyone needs technical skills in data analysis, API development or UX and design, but team members that have them provide great value. Community teams and those who lead them do need to understand where their technical strengths lie and what individual skills can do to strengthen the community if they are to reap the maximum benefits from them.

TRAINING OPPORTUNITY

Data. Data. Data. ROI and engagement statistics are critical, and your community’s existence is heavily based on demonstrating behavior change and measuring community value, so it’s not surprising that the ability to collect and analyze data is seen as both a valued skill and a training need at all levels. Because community teams often need just a limited number of “experts” in other technical skills, community professionals may want to pursue the opportunities that most excite them, while keeping in mind community needs and desires.

CLIMBING THE LADDER

Technical skills are unusual in that strategists and directors value the skills themselves less than their ability to manage the people who have strong technical skills on their team. At all levels, being tech savvy will help you move up the ladder — and investing in specific knowledge can help you develop into a community technologist role, a horizontal career path that has great value, particularly as a consultant. Software and application programming, for example, was the lowest scoring skill of all we surveyed — but being able to code software and APIs can be a hugely valuable to certain organizations or the vendors who serve them.

Want to level up more of your community management skills? Click a skill set to learn more:

50 Essential Skills in Community Management

December 21, 2015 By Jim Storer

We’re going to take a break from our weekly series of facts from the Community Careers and Compensation report to review the 50 essential community manager skills from the Community Skills Framework™.

We updated the Community Skills Framework™ as a means to explore the value of 50 essential skills of community management. This is the second iteration of the framework, which was launched in 2014 as a set of 37 skills in 4 skill families. Reviewing the data from 2014 with members of TheCR Network, we recognized that we hadn’t tapped into the full family of business and strategic skills — which we separated into two families, and added a number of other skills that we noted were absent from the first edition of the framework.

In the Community Careers and Compensation Survey — we asked community management professionals to rank the skills that are most valuable to their role and surface those skills which carry the greatest value across all community roles, as well as those that are most critical within individual community roles and use cases.

We also see an opportunity to use the framework as:

• A structure for strategic planning

• A tool for online community manager training and professional development

The Community Skills Framework™ gives community leaders a way to better identify and understand skill gaps and opportunities for creating stronger teams

The 50 Essential Community Manager Skills

—ENGAGEMENT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS—

Listening & Analyzing
Response & Escalation
Moderation & Conflict Facilitation
Promoting Productive Behaviors
Empathy & Member Support
Facilitating Connections
New Member Recruitment
New Member Welcoming
Member Advocacy
Behavior Change & Gamification

—STRATEGIC COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS—

Community Strategy Development
Roadmap Development
Policy & Guideline Development
Needs & Competitive Analysis
Measurement, Benchmarking & Reporting
Trendspotting & Synthesizing
Consulting
Executive Coaching
Content Strategy Development
Evaluating Engagement Techniques

—BUSINESS COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS—

Program Management
Business Model Development
Budget & Financial Management
Team Hiring & Management
Contractor Hiring & Management
Selling, Influencing & Evangelizing
Community Advocacy & Promotion
Training Development & Delivery
Vendor Management
Governance Management

—CONTENT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS—

Communication Planning
Writing
Graphics & Design
Multimedia Production
Narrative Development
Editing
Curation
Program & Event Planning
Taxonomy & Tagging Management
SEO &/or Internal Search Optimization

—TECHNICAL COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS—

Systems Administration & Configuration
Data Collection & Analysis
Tool Evaluation & Recommendation
Technical Support
Member Database Management
Platform Architecture & Integration
Technology Issue Resolution
Software & Application Programming
UX & Design
Algorithm Design & Data Manipulation

How do your community skills stack up against the list of essential community manager skills? Any areas you’d like to focus on for your personal growth as a community manager? What is your list of essential community manager skills?

Want to dig deeper into the essential community manager skills?

Check out our free Community 101: Models and Frameworks course to walk through the Community Skills Framework™. Use the worksheet included with the free course to document where you are and how you can level up your essential community manager skills.